Cellular communications systems typically provide interconnect and/or dispatch voice communication services. Interconnect voice communication services are those typically provided by most cellular carriers as circuit-switched communications. Dispatch communication services are commonly known as a “walkie-talkie” type of call, such as provided by Sprint Nextel Corporation and identified by the trade names Push-To-Talk (PTT) or Direct Connect. The popularity of dispatch calls is ever expanding and this increase in popularity has created a demand for more features to be associated with these types of calls.
One type of dispatch call is a multi-party communication session. In this type of call, whereas only one person at a time is able to speak, multiple participants can speak at any time during the call. However, there may be times when it is desirable that only specified persons can talk during a portion of the call, i.e., the specified persons have the “floor”, and the remainder of the participants are permitted to talk during another portion of the call. This may be particularly useful, for example, when a company is conducting a multi-party dispatch call and a presentation is made by a presenter during a first part of the call and a question and answer session for participation by all participants is conducted after the presentation. In this circumstance, it would be desirable that only the presenter has the floor during the presentation part of the call and all participants could have access to the floor during the question and answer session.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide an improved multi-party dispatch call capability that includes the floor control functionality discussed above. This improved capability could provide greater functionality for conducting a particular type of multi-party dispatch call.